comfort meN
by El Burrito
Summary: People find comfort in ritual. Yuffie had never understood it, before he started coming and taking from her, until she had nothing, and everything, left.


**Women who served as prostitutes for the Japanese army in WWII were referred to as comfort women. It's relevant to nothing except the title.**

**Christ knows when I started writing this. It's been sitting on my computer for months and whenever I came back to it I could never think of an ending. Not totally satisfied with how it ends, but all the same, I like it lots, probably the most out of everything I've written, and I'm glad it finally made it up. Enjoy, r&r and the rest of it.**

**-----**

People find comfort in ritual.

It's what Yuffie had never understood.

"Why are they doing that?" she would ask, her voice filled with sixteen-year-old contempt and judgement, pointing to the men dancing in the fields during Wutai's biggest drought, even though everyone knew it wasn't magic that brought rain. Or staring in confusion at the man who left a dish of milk out for his cat every night, even though it had long since disappeared and never touched it.

"What's the point in _that_?" she would demand loudly in earshot of the woman planting a new crop of carrot seeds, even though Meteor would be there in a matter of days, long before the carrot seeds split to release their first tiny root, and would annihilate everything.

And her father, or Cloud, or Aeris or Tifa or Red XIII or whoever was nearest would always say the same thing. "Because they have to."

And her answer would be fitted around a template of "That's stupid."

But now she was getting it. And maybe that made _her _stupid, and maybe it made her weak, to be overcompensating for powerlessness by taking refuge in tiny tasks, which she'd repeated so often they gave comfort, like the slippers she put on every day and were moulded to fit perfectly about her foot. Slippers for the soul.

Suddenly, if anyone had asked her why, every day just after sunset, she got her mat out and spent thirty minutes in meditation, even though it had always bored the life out of her when her father had forced her down next to him, and even though her fingers twisting and pulling at the tassels of the mat conveyed quite well that she was not relaxed or reaching for a higher plane, she would have told them, because she had to.

If anyone had asked her why she lit incense in the early evening, even though the smell irritated her and it was costing her a fortune to get the sticks all the way from Wutai, she'd have told them, because she had to.

If anyone had asked her why, upon entering a room, she sniffed the air deeply, she would have told them, shut the hell up and she wasn't even what are you talking about?

If anyone had asked her why she let him come, again and again, and take from her and use her and enjoy her, she would have told them, because I have to.

The first sign would be the smell. She'd get home from training or running or working at that materia shop downtown where the hours were flexible and she got a wicked staff discount or whatever she'd been doing to fill in the hours of the days, so long now that Meteor was gone, and she would know immediately. The bitter, lung-choking smell of cigarettes, the cigarettes Tifa looked on as disgusting and Cloud agreed because he agreed with pretty much anything Tifa said these days, the smell which Yuffie couldn't stand but missed when it wasn't around, filling her house as though several dozen cigars had been lit and left in every room.

He'd be on her couch, or in her kitchen in front of the fridge, straight-backed and rigid, one leg jittering up and down as if the energy he fought so hard to control in the rest of him was bursting out there. He was always like this, without fail, a twitching mess of nervous energy.

Yuffie didn't know why. She didn't understand a thing about him, or, as he was proving, about herself. About what she liked, what she wanted, what she thought about herself.

"Hi," he'd say quickly, awkwardly, in a 'hm this is a slightly embarrassing situation, isn't it?' kind of way.

"What are you doing here, Reno?" she would ask, resigned. It was as if reading from a script, she knew her part so well and played it so flawlessly.

"Got anything to eat?" he would ask, or, "Anything to drink?" or "Can I borrow a measuring jug?" or anything to allow her to assume a position of hospitality without making it seem like she wanted to.

And then, and she'd never figured out how they got from a glass of water to here quite so easily, they'd end up in Yuffie's tiny bedroom for hours and Reno was always on top and Yuffie would scream into his face and he would scream back into hers, his voice rising above her and god knew what the neighbours thought or if they thought anything but as soon as he was satisfied he would leave without a word.

And Yuffie would get up when she heard the door close and watch him go down the street and then she'd just stand there, because she couldn't go back to bed because she couldn't stay there when it was empty and it still smelled like him and it made her heart, or somewhere near her heart, ache because if there was one thing she wanted, one thing that could make his visits less painful to her in every way, it would be if he would just stay. For twenty, even ten minutes, he would just lie beside her, his body hot, his arm around her, her face pressed into the warmth of his collarbone.

So she'd stand in her house, the shadows lengthening until she couldn't make out a thing in her apartment, but she knew where everything was anyway and she wasn't really looking.

And the smell would linger, of sweat and cigarette smoke and something harder to place, the powdery bleach smell of well-cared-for clothes in a stable home.

He was looking different than he used to. The ruffled jackets, crooked ties and creased pants were gone, replaced with immaculately ironed slacks and pristine shirts, a thick silver watch left on her bedside table. He no longer left mud-caked boots on her floor, but perfect white joggers. He'd gained weight too, mostly in his face, the hollow cheeks filled in and his bones not so protruding. He was still as long and lithe as ever, but one day soon he would be bulky and ordinary, Yuffie could tell, no longer able to lure girls with a wink because he reminded them too much of their fathers. Maybe even she would be able to quit him then.

She was the authority on Reno's development because she'd been there for so much of it. Reno in Gongaga, focussing his attacks on Cloud and not even considering that the little ninja-girl was a threat until she sunk her shuriken into the side of his face, when he swore and the battle became almost one-on-one between the two, flirting between blows because he was hawt and _god _she'd been a kid back then; Reno in Wutai, her home, lounging around so cool and composed and juxtaposed with Cloud's awkward bumbling; Reno in the Gelnika just asking for her to try her new Conformer on him; Reno under Midgar seeming distracted, exhausted and skinnier than ever; Reno turning up in her house one day out of the blue, skeletal and pale except for deep smudges under his eyes, asking for a glass of water, fucking her and then leaving.

The first time she'd been confused, upset, as he walked silently out, ignoring her calling his name. She'd felt dirty, used, cheap and abandoned and she'd spent the rest of the week hissing his name mixed with expletives in rage as she flung the conformer at a sack stuffed with sand, with red chocobo feathers stuck to the top.

Then she went to lunch with Tifa and Cloud, where they were polite and patronising and so _couply _that by the time she reached home, at sunset, she was in a seriously bad mood.

Made worse by the red-headed man watching cartoons on her couch.

"You're late," he observed, not turning from the television.

"What do you want, Reno?" she asked, spitting hostility. She was tired and cranky and not ready to face him.

"You got any milk?"

And apparently she did, and he didn't even have to buy the cow. She had no idea how he did it. How his touch made her melt into him and dissolved all her fury at him and all her barriers and then she was lying down watching him pull his boots on and thinking that she'd have to wash all that mud off the floor now.

And she asked him, "Why do you do this to me?"

And he asked right back, "Why do you let me?"

And she hated him and loved him and wanted to pull him back down beside her and keep him there forever and punch that stupid face until it was bloody and unrecognisable and for it to go back to the pre-Meteor days when her life had purpose and Reno was an enemy and a Turk and nothing more.

And then he was standing up and walking out and he told her, "It helps me sleep." She didn't know what he meant and whether that was the truth and that was all, but she couldn't deny that he looked a little less pale, a little less gaunt, and this time when she got up she hated herself a little less and a little more.

He kept coming and she kept letting him, and he stunk up her apartment and made her hate everything she knew and made her already dull, pointless existence even more unbearable than ever, but for a few hours every two weeks or so she was happy and things were different, things _could _be different, and she didn't think she could give that up.

A few months after his first visit she ran into Elena on the street.

"Yuffie?" she'd gasped, as if they'd been friends, or anything more than complete enemies either side of a battlefield. "How are you, Yuffie?"

And Yuffie had muttered something about being fine.

"Are you busy? Do you want to do something?"

The answer to both was no but Yuffie got through explaining that she just needed milk and Elena took that to be a yes to the second question, and they wound up in a little café drinking coffee.

Maybe the answer had been a yes. Gods knew, Yuffie needed company. AVALANCHE had disbanded and she was sick of stifling Wutai and Junon was so sterile but it was the best place Yuffie could find.

So she sipped her coffee and spoke to Elena, really _spoke _to her for the first time and found in her sympathy, understanding and an unexpected humour. She had the kindness and kind of… nurturing that Aeris had, the impossible-to-teach mothering instinct, that you automatically associate with warmth and soft hugs and skinned knees not hurting so much anymore.

But unlike Aeris, Elena was a peer to Yuffie. Elena was maybe the same age as the women or AVALANCHE – Yuffie had never been one of them – but she related to Yuffie and was more of a friend than a role model or parent-figure. She was also tough, and Yuffie supposed she should have expected that from someone who was accepted into the Turks.

By the bottom of her first cup of coffee, Yuffie wasn't altogether surprised when Elena suggested, "Let's go get drunk," even though it was only 3 in the afternoon.

They found themselves a little underground bar inhabited only by a few single, unhappy middle-aged men where the arrival of two pretty girls was greeted with shock, and the proceeding outdrinking of the pretty girls of the middle-aged men with downright disbelief.

Between drinks, they spoke.

"So how are Cloud and the others?" Elena had particularly good grammar when drunk, and if it weren't for the slight slur in 'uthasss' might have convinced the room she was sober.

"Oh, you know," Yuffie waved a hand, giggling as she knocked her nearly-empty glass to the counter and signalled for another, "All gone. Cloud and Tifa are together-"

"No _way_! Rude'll be so pissed!"

"No joke, and they are _such _a good couple. Well, Cloud's lost all fight and Tifa's become an overbearing housewife and Cloud wears a _tie!_"

Yuffie had wondered if anyone else thought this as surreal as she did, but Elena's laughter confirmed that they did.

"Barret's, like, an office-worker, Red's off searching the stars or some shit, he's gotten _so _boring now, or maybe he always was, and Vinnie's probably slashing his wrists or something."

"Wow," Elena chuckled.

"Yeah, thus ends the formidable AVALANCHE. How are the Turks holding up? Do you still talk to them?"

"Oh, well, Tseng was beaten within an inch of his life and now he's gone all weird and keeps talking about 'holistic healing' and 'aura cleansing' and moved up into the mountains wearing burlap or something, and Rude goes about shooting Bandersnatches for a living. It's about all he eats and his liver or something got poisoned from it."

"Well, and this might sound mean, but it's sort of comforting to know that we aren't the only ones who got really, really fucked up."

"Right back at you," Elena raised her glass to Yuffie.

"So how's Reno?" Yuffie asked, trying to sound disinterested.

"Reno? Oh, fucked if I know. I saw him a few weeks ago, lying in an alley just looking up at the sky. I asked him what he was doing but he was pretty drunk and told me to leave him alone. Probably dead by now."

For some reason the knowledge that the last time she'd seen him he'd been looking pretty good – well, he'd always looked pretty good, but now he looked well-rested and healthy – made Yuffie feel good about herself, even if all she'd done was let him fuck her.

They parted at the end of the night and exchanged phone numbers with promises to meet up again, and surprisingly they did, and often, drinking and laughing and speaking with a kind of equal resignation and distaste for life and for Junon and for almost everything.

Yuffie's life was brightening a little. She'd stopped visiting Tifa and Cloud, or calling them, or answering her phone when she saw it was them. She knew how strongly they'd disapprove that she was hanging out with Turks, ex-Turks, and she didn't feel like another of Tifa's lectures on how life should be lived and how her life was all flowers and candy.

Yuffie's life wasn't flowers and candy. Sometimes it was unbearable, like that first hour after he left or when she got home late to find her house stinking and her milk empty but him already gone, or after a few days when his smell had faded, or when he didn't come for weeks and she wondered if he would ever again, or when Elena was prattling on all obsessed with rising to the top in her new job – some paper-worky thing Yuffie didn't find at all interesting – and following rules and such.

But more and more often when she woke and remembered that Elena was meeting her for lunch or that Reno had fixed her crappy TV while he was waiting for her to get home, so she now got six channels instead of two, she could face the world with something resembling happiness. Even dealing with irate customers who didn't know shit about materia and would never fight in their lives, but just wanted in on the new trend was easier when she thought about how funny it would seem when she related it to Elena.

She never really knew where she stood with Reno. He spent a lot of time in her apartment, watching TV or fixing things or eating all her food, but never when she was there. They spoke of hardly anything, and he always left immediately. Occasionally she found things, obscure things like a handful of desert sand left on her coffee table, or chocobo feathers on her bookcase or shiny, worn stones left on top of the fridge. She didn't understand why he brought these things, or left them, but it made her feel happy to know that he thought about her other times than when he was in her apartment.

She never thought of their relationship with any specific terms. _Friend_ was out, because she wasn't sure if he even liked her, or if she liked him. _Lover _was probably more accurate, but maybe she needed to think she was more than that, and _girlfriend _was just ridiculous to apply to this situation.

Even knowing this, Yuffie wasn't ready for the hurt that came when Elena bounced into her apartment, her grim, sarcastic world-view gone and replaced with, well, flowers and candy, and announced that she and Reno were together and she may well be in love with him.

What, was all Yuffie could manage.

I know it seems weird, this girly, giggling stranger gushed, because we used to fight all the time and I thought he was a dickhead but he's really quite funny. We ran into each other a few weeks ago and he's looking good, like, really good – Yuffie did _not _need to be told this particular point – and we got talking and now he comes by all the time.

What does he do when he comes by, Yuffie wanted to know, not really wanting to know.

We just talk, mostly, talk and eat. We haven't actually _done _anything yet, but I don't know, he's really great.

And then in a tight voice Yuffie told Elena she couldn't make it to lunch, and Elena left, disappointed, and that night Yuffie started lighting incense and meditating.

And it wasn't because she was a good person, and felt bad about not telling her best friend that she was sleeping with her… whatever he was to her, and it wasn't because she regretted being used by him all this time. It was because now that he had Elena, maybe he wouldn't need her anymore. Maybe he would stop coming. And to stop these traitorous thoughts and to pretend that life was normal, or at least as normal as this life of hers had ever been, she fell into ritual.

He didn't stop coming. And she didn't send him away. She wasn't sure which of them was worse. The first time he came she asked him, what was he doing here when he was with Elena?

And he leaned back in her chair, the one she sat in every night to eat dinner in front of her six channels, leg jittering, and asked, "What do you mean?"

And she told him he knew exactly what she meant.

"Yuffie… what we have, it's… not like what I have with Elena."

"How can you do this to Elena?"

He shrugged. "It lets me sleep. It makes all the darkness go away for a while." Then he stood up.

And Yuffie pretended that it had been his words, his expression, his voice, _him _that made her follow him to her bedroom, not her own selfish wants and easy betrayal of one of the few genuinely nice people left in the world.

Then it got worse. With six words, it got infinitely worse, it extended Yuffie's 'meditation' another half hour and had her lifting her order for incense.

"Reno's asked me to marry him."

The whole affair was awful. Elena looking radiant and more beautiful than Yuffie could ever hope to be, especially pushed to the side in a stupid puffy blue dress when blue looked awful on her, all crumpled and messy because she couldn't sleep properly the night before.

Reno looking as dashing and charming as he ever did, smiling at his bride like all the time in the world wouldn't be enough with her. When he saw Yuffie he smiled at her once, indifferent, like she was just some friend of his wife's. Elena always wondered why the two of them balked at the times she tried to get the two people she loved best in the world to get together before the wedding, unaware that one of them loved the other too, and he… well, who could tell what Reno thought about anything?

She'd been over for lunch a few times, their new house taking on all the little details Elena had laughed at as Yuffie described them in Cloud and Tifa's. The first time Reno had smiled politely at her.

"Hey, Yuffie. It's been a while," he'd said, even though he'd been over two days before. She'd forced a smile.

"Nice to see you again."

Then they'd eaten and Reno had excused himself, disappearing until Yuffie left. Elena had been a disappointed, they both knew, though they didn't discuss it, but disappointed was miles better than hurt and crushed and torn.

Because marriage, marriage was a whole new realm. Yuffie couldn't trick herself into thinking it was just some short-term thing, that it'd be over soon. Marriage was permanent. What she was doing, what they were doing, it could ruin everything.

But she couldn't stop. She'd even given up telling herself that this was it; the next time he came she'd send him away, because she couldn't. And it was stupid little things that stopped her, that he had his feet on the coffee table, the mug he'd glued up for her, his hands drumming on the armrest, she couldn't imagine life without that. She couldn't imagine that she could _live _without that, without him.

So he kept coming. And kept coming. And he morphed further, from a healthy young man into a clean, slightly-pudgy older man, but this time Yuffie knew it wasn't because of her. Every time Elena told Yuffie false information, like that he'd given up smoking, she would want to scream. Was she a total moron? Could she not taste the cigarettes in Reno's breath at least once a week? How did Elena not notice that her husband was so often away from home, not notice that _something _was different when he returned? It drove her insane.

And finally something snapped.

One day, Reno strode confidently down the street, to see smoke coming from Yuffie's apartment. She hoped it made his heart stop. She hoped it made him feel slightly sick, and repulsed but excited, oh so excited.

She stood out the front, watching it burn. She wasn't wearing shoes, and her hair was around her shoulders.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Leaving."

"For good?"

"Yep."

She wasn't expecting a heartfelt plea to not go, and a confession of love. She'd been welcomed to the real world many, many times, and long ago, enough that she was hardened on the inside and Reno's "That sucks," barely touched her.

"No it doesn't," she told him, and with one, final glance at him, his hair trimmed short and his leanness all but invisible, turned and made her way up the street.

She'd miss him. And she'd miss Elena. And she'd miss the meditation mat being licked at by the flames and the incense filling the street with the scent of Wutaian rituals and festivals. But she could leave them, and the comfort they and other things provided, behind, and for now, that was enough.


End file.
